Cost-benefit analysis for commissioning decisions in GEO600

TL;DR

This paper presents a cost-benefit analysis method for optimizing commissioning decisions in gravitational wave detectors, aiming to maximize observable sources by efficiently managing detector downtime and noise mitigation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to evaluate the severity of noise contaminations to guide commissioning, improving detector sensitivity and observational potential.

Findings

Method increases observable gravitational wave sources.

Guides commissioning to reduce detector downtime.

Applicable to early stages of advanced detectors.

Abstract

Gravitational wave interferometers are complex instruments, requiring years of commissioning to achieve the required sensitivities for the detection of gravitational waves, of order 10^-21 in dimensionless detector strain, in the tens of Hz to several kHz frequency band. Investigations carried out by the GEO600 detector characterisation group have shown that detector characterisation techniques are useful when planning for commissioning work. At the time of writing, GEO600 is the only large scale laser interferometer currently in operation running with a high duty factor, 70%, limited chiefly by the time spent commissioning the detector. The number of observable gravitational wave sources scales as the product of the volume of space to which the detector is sensitive and the observation time, so the goal of commissioning is to improve the detector sensitivity with the least possible detector down time. We demonstrate a method for increasing the number of sources observable by such a detector, by assessing the severity of non-astrophysical noise contaminations to efficiently guide commissioning. This method will be particularly useful in the early stages and during the initial science runs of the aLIGO and adVirgo detectors, as they are brought up to design performance.